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The Global Jihad Against Jews

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Mitchell Bard
Dr Mitchell Bard is the Executive Director of the nonprofit American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE) and a foreign policy analyst who
… [More]lectures frequently on U.S.-Middle East policy. Dr. Bard is the director of the Jewish Virtual Library, the world's most comprehensive online encyclopedia of Jewish history and culture. He is also the author/editor of 24 books, including The Arab Lobby, Death to the Infidels: Radical Islam’s War Against the Jews and the novel After Anatevka: Tevye in Palestine. [Less]

Fabrice Schomberg, the Times of Israel reported, is one of a handful of Jews living in an apartment complex with one of the Netherlands’ largest concentrations of Muslim immigrants. A news crew filmed Schomberg being verbally abused on the street because he was wearing a yarmulke. During the summer, rioters near his neighborhood, Schilderswijk in The Hague, flew ISIS flags and called for the killing of Jews. The Netherlands has been the scene of other threats to Jews, prompting former Dutch defense minister, Frits Bolkestein, to say “there is no future for them in the Netherlands and that they best advise their children to leave for the United States or Israel.”

The situation in the Netherlands is not unique; Jews are being victimized by radical Muslims around the world in countries such as Belgium, England, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Argentina, India, Hungary and Venezuela. One of the most heinous incidents was the murder of three French-Jewish children and a rabbi in Toulouse.

Some believe Jews have become targets because of anger over Israeli policies; however, the roots of the violence can be found in what many Muslims are taught in school and the influence of radical Muslims.

The Koran, written hundreds of years before the establishment of Israel, has nothing to say about Zionists but contains a number of pejorative statements about Jews that are amplified by extremists. Moreover, for centuries, Muslims did not see Jews as a threat since they were stateless, powerless, and despised as the “descendants of apes and pigs.” Today, however, Jews are viewed as an all-powerful, malevolent influence on the world. Worse, they now have a state on “Islamic land” and, unconscionably, govern Muslims.

Radical Muslims can be distinguished by their unabashed admission that they consider Jews to be infidels. For Hamas, it is a religious obligation to conduct a holy war to destroy Israel and subjugate or kill the Jews. Hezbollah, Iran, ISIS, al-Qaeda, and the Muslim Brotherhood share this goal and see it as a stepping stone to the establishment of a worldwide caliphate.

The radicals’ jihad is escalating in Europe. France’s interior minister, Manuel Valls, said the vast majority of anti-Semitic incidents in France are attributable to young Muslims. “Salafism,” he declared, “has bred a new brand of anti-Semitism born from hatred for Jews, for Israel and for France and its values.”

In Britain, one study found that Muslims were responsible for 30 percent of the anti-Semitic incidents even though they comprise only 3 percent of the population. Another study found that 37 percent of British Muslims believe British Jews are “legitimate targets as part of the struggle for justice in the Middle East.”

A report by the EU Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia found that radical Islamists and young Muslims “were responsible for most physical attacks on Jews and the desecration and destruction of synagogues.” Extremists were also responsible “for placing anti-Semitic propaganda in the Internet and in Arab-language media.” The report noted that many attacks on Jews “occurred during or after pro-Palestinian demonstrations, which were also used by radical Islamists for hurling verbal abuse.” Interestingly, this report was never released by the European Union, presumably because of the fear of a Muslim backlash.

Changing demographics are having a dangerous impact on European Jewry as well as European-Israeli relations. These ties have long been hampered by Europe’s dependence on Middle East oil and fear that supporting Israel would alienate their oil suppliers. This problem is magnified by the growing Muslim population on the continent where, for example, the Muslim population in France is ten times larger than the Jewish community. The situation is expected to grow worse if the non-Muslim population continues to decline while the Muslim population grows exponentially.

The West does not even recognize that it is sowing the seeds for its own possible destruction. While Western countries are open to Muslims and the free practice of their religion, non-Muslims are not welcome in most Muslim countries. This one-sided flow of Muslims, including extremists, has allowed the radicals to find havens in European countries where they can recruit jihadists, plan attacks domestically and abroad, and take advantage of Western democracy to create bases of operations.

The growing Muslim population also poses a physical threat to Jews in Europe. A poll of Jews in Belgium, Britain, France, Germany Hungary, Italy, Latvia, and Sweden found that nearly one-third of European Jews are considering emigration because they don’t feel safe. Two-thirds said they considered anti-Semitism to be a major problem, and 76 percent said the situation had grown worse in the last five years. The Jewish respondents said the threats came from Muslim extremists (27 percent), people with left-wing political views (22 percent), and people with right-wing views (19 percent). Polls also show that Muslims have a much less favorable view of Jews than the general European public.

“The increasingly isolated Jewish communities have become the targets of militant Muslim rage in much of Western Europe,” notes historian Robert Wistrich. “Their synagogues, communal institutions and even cultural centers have steadily been turned into fortresses” and hostility to Israel has “become the daily bread of European public discourse.” Consequently, Wistrich believes that “any clear-sighted and sensible Jew who has a sense of history would understand that this is the time to get out.”

Islamists label Europeans or democratically-minded Muslims “Islamophobic” if they interfere with the planned transition to an Islamic society. “Indeed, in the radical Islamic view,” Michel Gurfinkiel observes, “any objection or opposition to Islam or to the transformation of Western secular democracy into Islamic theocracy vindicates jihadism as a legitimate form of self-defense.”

A religious war is in progress. Jews are among the first victims, but won’t be the last.

Dr. Mitchell Bard is the author/editor of 24 books including The Arab Lobby and Death to the Infidels: Radical Islam’s War Against the Jews.

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